Ikea Cat Herding

A quick post on an experiential marketing event staged for IKEA that if nothing else generated some major viral activity and online youtube hits (and this post I guess) but to be frank, I am not sure what the messaging point of it actually is. The premise… or as they put it – the ‘experiment’ was to release 100 regular cats into an IKEA store overnight and see what happens…

What happened? The thing is… the cats kinda did exactly what cat things do… they jumped on and off stuff… and slept… and looked about a lot before jumping and sleeping again… that’s what happened.

Look if anything – the true genius in this video is the closing footage with the lone cat wandering through the huge warehouse looking for the exit (man. I so relate to this) and of course the expected snuggly cat sleeping in one of the display beds. Kudos to the editor.

So how’d the video go in terms of creating an experience that would drive positive commercial outcomes for IKEA… haha only kidding – well like almost everyone on Earth… we know who they are and what they are about so it kinda didn’t add to this… Would we/I go to IKEA based of this? m’eh. So I guess I’m saying – we just don’t know. Still I am sure it was argued that an outcome that produced snuggly cat in awwww an IKEA bed has to be a good thing.

Okay… we don’t know why they did it. However we suspect this is a possible product of awkward timing. It’s almost like someone threw up this 100 cats event idea during a brainstorm meeting straight after the CEO had declared that there was no sure thing as a bad idea. Bugger.

Okay well has it changed my position on cats then? Well… no… they’re still kinda annoying and I still fight the urge to kick them… but I don’t of course because I can never find the bloody things in IKEA when I am wandering aimlessly looking for the Swedish coffee table with different leg lengths. Man. What I wouldn’t give for a bit of stress busting cat kicking…

No.

For us, what we would have liked to have seen is a hundred grown men being released into an IKEA store overnight armed only with an allen key and watch as they try to build some of the product against the clock with only each other to assist (or hinder as the case might be). Anyway – they didn’t do this. Check out IKEA cats below.